


His Brother's Keeper

by tielan



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Brothers, Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, Gen, Parallels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-04
Updated: 2013-09-04
Packaged: 2017-12-25 14:18:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/954116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It is rare for Jaeger pilots to survive the death of the other - rare out of the Drift and even rarer when one pilot dies in-Drift. In a moment of violent death, during a battle, it would take a strong and determined will not to psychologically reach for the person they feel closest to, whom they know best, who is <i>theirs</i> beyond all shadow of a doubt."<br/>~ Dr. Helen Jiang, Jaeger Psyche Analyst ~</p>
            </blockquote>





	His Brother's Keeper

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Сторож брату своему](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1034102) by [Alre_Snow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alre_Snow/pseuds/Alre_Snow)



> Ohemgee. This universe has layers like a freaking bloody _onion_ and I feel like I'm peeling back an awful lot of them. (And crying inside.) This is not quite the story I wanted to tell about the Yancy-Raleigh, Raleigh-Mako bonds and their parallels, but I think it's about as close as I'm going to get.
> 
> The story where Yancy survives is another beast entirely. Let's not go there today...

Salt spray and terror wash over him. Fear in his mouth as he looks back at the great, glowing eye of Knifehead, as he feels the ghost-ache in their left arm, where the _kaiju_ tore it off.

_How did they know we were here? They’ve never done this before – targeting the pilots. If they know to target us then they know how to break—_

“No,” says Raleigh behind him, following his thoughts.

A spark strikes within Yancy, rebellion and protectiveness and determination. He looks over at his brother.

“Raleigh, listen to me! You—”

* * *

He wakes gasping, with Mako’s hands hard on his shoulders, calling his name as she shakes him awake.

“Yancy,” he says – is all he needs to say before he buries his face in her throat and shudders in her arms. He can feel the hole inside him again, the emptiness that clawed at him beneath the weight of the Jaeger pressing on his mind.

She feels it, too, rocking them both, her nails digging into his shoulders as she Ghost-Drifts with him in the horror of Yancy’s loss, in the agony of her own childhood certainties stripped bare.

That’s what pulls him back in the end – the knowledge that in cradling his pain, he’s making her fight herself as well as him. His Yancy is her Tokyo: two children who lost the people they’d trusted to catch them when they fell. She found refuge with Pentecost, he found refuge in solitude, and they healed in their own ways, but the missing parts of them remain.

They have each other to catch and keep now.

He clings to that thought, holds her hard and close as he steers them out of the memories of desperation and fear, until her shudders ease and his own are nothing more than the pounding of his heart against his ribcage and her breast.

“He would have wanted you to live,” she murmurs. “As you wanted me to live when we were in the Breach.”

“Yes.” Raleigh angles his head into the curve of her throat, caught in the memory – the fierce protectiveness that had flamed within him at that moment: _Falling is easy. Anyone can fall..._

Mako hiccups. The little noise tilts his mouth upwards at the corners where his lips press against her neck, and she shakes with sudden laughter. It quiets as he shifts – a subtle movement that asks a question without pressuring her for an answer.

Her answer is a turned head, and a nose-nudge to lift his face to hers for a tender meeting of mouths.

Mako doesn’t fill the hole – no-one could ever replace Yancy, just as Stacker would never replace her parents – but she’s something else, something all her own.

She’s something all _his_.

Raleigh eases them down in the soft cotton sheets and reminds himself of that again.

* * *

Breathless pain in his chest, darkness and fog and fire. The sticky sweetness of _kaiju_ blue all around him – cut by the steel and oil of his Jaeger, broken by the shape of his thoughts as he falls.

Falling is easy – anyone can do it. And, after all, it’s not the fall that kills you, is it?

The wrenching emptiness of the broken Drift sucks at him, a black hole that’s painful enough for Yancy and which will be worse for his brother after the short, sharp stop at the end.

 _Survive, Rals,_ he whispers to the hole inside him as he falls. _Survi—_

 _The Drift is far more complex, far more intimate than we ever imagined._  
~ Dr. Caitlin Lightcap ~


End file.
